Light Touch Puts LeMond in the Frame : Cycling: He will ride Calfee’s unique carbon fiber bicycles in the Tour de France, which will begin with time trial today.

Craig Calfee was a sculptor and a performance artist before he knew anything about building bicycles. He worked as a crewman on sailboats in the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, and once hitch-hiked across Africa, stowed away on a freighter and landed in South America.

Then he came home to Boston and worked as a boat builder, making Olympic racing shells and kayaks with carbon fiber material.

Now, Calfee and his co-workers could have a profound effect on the outcome of the Tour de France, which begins today with a 5.3-kilometer time trial in Lyon.

Calfee, 29, makes customized carbon fiber bicycle frames in a little shop on Market Street in San Francisco. Those frames will be used by Greg LeMond and his Z (pronounced Zed) teammates.

This connection gives Calfee and his company, Carbon Frames, instant recognition.

Cyclists are always searching for secrets to reduce their times. They select frames made of steel, aluminum, titanium or carbon fiber. Components such as forks, cranks, derailleur gears, spokes, wheels, hubs, pedals and seats are fashioned from the lightest material available to withstand the rigors of serious road racing.

Does equipment make a difference over the course of the three-week Tour de France, a 2,462-mile trek this year?

LeMond’s opponents believe so, and the mind does funny things to riders in this 22-stage affair that will run counterclockwise through France, ending July 28 in Paris.

In the 1989 Tour, LeMond used clip-on handlebars called aerobars during a time trial on the final day. Most other competitors, including leader Laurent Fignon, did not use the aerodynamically designed bars. LeMond overcame Fignon’s 50-second lead to win.

Now whispers abound about LeMond’s carbon fiber frame.

Calfee and partner Steve Levin, who has a master’s degree in composite materials from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, devised a new method for joining the carbon-made tubes.

Calfee said the Z team riders did not like their carbon fiber bikes, which were glued together, because “they were too flexible, too scary to ride. They get wobbly with a lot of speed.”

Calfee added: “Confidence is one of the most important things for pros. That’s why Greg always goes for the technological advantage.”

Levin said the frame makers made contact with LeMond through friends of friends of friends. LeMond first tried the frame at the end of the Paris-Nice road race last March. He asked Calfee to fly to France to get indoctrinated into professional cycling.

The frames could work, LeMond told Calfee, but needed modification. Calfee copied the specifications of LeMond’s titanium bikes, then returned to San Francisco to embark on state-of-the-line tubing.

Calfee’s next bike pleased LeMond, who used it in the Tour Du Pont last May.

“He called me and was raving about the bike,” Calfee said. “It was the only bike he wanted to ride. He’ll ride it in every kind of race instead of switching, as in past Tours. He said it was more comfortable than titanium, and plenty stiff enough. It was quite a bit more stable than anything he had ridden. He could really scream down the hills.”

Calfee’s sortie into cycle-making was as serendipitous as his meeting LeMond.

He was studying sculpting at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn when he decided to take a year’s leave to visit Europe. After he tired of studying Western culture, he began hanging around the docks in Athens until he was hired as a one-man crew to sail to Sri Lanka.

There was a catch. The boat had a broken keel, and it was his job to fix it. Although he had never worked on a boat before, he quickly learned how to use resin and fiberglass.

His trip to Sri Lanka ended abruptly in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, when he had a disagreement with the captain. He hired on with another sailboat and debarked in Mombasa, Kenya.

“I didn’t have any money and thought it was time to get home,” Calfee said.

He went to an American Express office and concocted a story about losing his traveler’s checks. He talked them into issuing him new ones by giving them the numbers of ones in his possession. Calfee eventually ripped up the old ones without spending them, but he said that, in the meantime, having the checks helped him travel overland. He said he showed border guards at each new country the total supply of checks, and suitably impressed, they let him pass without hassle.

He hitch-hiked west across Kenya, Uganda, Zaire, the Congo and Cameroon.

“I was still pretty much out of money,” he said of his arrival in Cameroon. “I couldn’t buy a plane ticket to Europe, or even pay for a truck to take me across the Sahara.”

In the port city of Douala, Cameroon, he started looking for a freighter to take him across the Atlantic. He met a Filipino crewman on what is affectionately known as a tramp freighter, a ship that gets last-minute instructions on where to take its cargo. The captain let him stow away on the ship as it departed for Brazil.

As they were leaving port, however, an attempted coup engulfed Douala. The port was closed, and they waited through tense days before Cameroon government troops reopened the city.

Once in Brazil, Calfee was not allowed to leave the ship because he did not have an entrance visa. But the ship’s next stop turned out to be Mobile, Ala., so he returned to the United States, albeit by a circuitous route.

Soon he was making boats in Boston and riding his bicycle for transportation.

He made his first bike out of necessity. Let him explain:

“I used to be a bike messenger in New York City. I’d always ridden a bike to stay in shape. At the time I was in Boston, I had an $80 Schwinn Varsity. I wrecked it in a head-on collision with a Camaro. I went head over the handlebars and landed 20 feet down the road.

“A group of homeboys in East Boston were watching in front of a local liquor store. They kind of went, ‘Whoa!’ I had three other accidents when I was a messenger, but never anything like that.”

Calfee needed a new bike, but did not have the money to buy one. He began tinkering, using the mechanics of boat building. He was not a machinist, but braided some carbon tubes together with the aid of homemade plastic tools.

“I kind of slapped it together,” he said.

The first prototype was crude by today’s standard, but it had its virtues. Calfee said he took the bike, made for pavement, through the Massachusetts woods to see if it was sturdy.

He jumped boulders and fallen trees, pedaled over rocky shoulders and in mud up to his knees.

He could not break it.

So he made another for a girlfriend and decided to leave boat building to start designing bicycle frames.

Calfee and Levin will not market their $1,800 frames, which could become the rage of cycling if LeMond wins the Tour de France again. They are leaving that to Greg LeMond Bicycles, which is the sole distributor of the frames.

“We bought a few bikes at first to test ride,” LeMond told reporters this week. “Technically speaking, it’s the best there is. It’s lucky we came together.”

The carbon fiber frames could give Z racers an advantage on the steep climbs through the Pyrenees and the French Alps because of their lightness.

LeMond, 30, is one of the favorites to win his fourth Tour and third in a row. Although his spring performance was mediocre by professional standards, it was, in his estimation, a success.

“There is no reason I can’t win this year,” LeMond told reporters during the Tour of Switzerland in June. “Even if I don’t win this year, I believe I have three or four good seasons left.”

In an interview last December, LeMond said: “In (spring) classics, you need some luck. Luck isn’t a part of the Tour de France.”

That is why he so carefully selects bicycle components and team riders. Last year’s victory, in which he overcame Italian Claudio Chiappucci on the next-to-last day, was celebrated as a Z triumph. LeMond’s teammates worked in unison for three weeks to help their leader win.

This year’s team appears to be primed for the domestique , or worker, role again.

Three Z cyclists--Robert Millar of Scotland, Bruno Cornillet of France and Jerome Simon of France--placed in the top 10 of the Tour of Switzerland last month. LeMond, who dropped out of the Tour of Italy before the 15th stage because of fatigue, placed 19th in the Swiss race. Another Z rider, Atle Kvalsvoll of Norway, was second in the Tour Du Pont.

Cornillet will not be part of the Tour de France team. Instead, Eric Boyer of France and Miguel Arroyo of Mexico will be riding with LeMond.

Over the long haul it is difficult to predict a winner, but if not LeMond, then who?

“I believe that the most dangerous will be (Eric) Breukink,” LeMond told reporters. “Still you can’t throw out (Pedro) Delgado. He rode well in the Giro (Tour of Italy) without making too much noise. But he was there.”

Chiappucci, who was second last year in the Tour de France, is not expected to challenge again. But Chiappucci’s Italian rival, Gianni Bugno of Milan, is considered a favorite. Bugno, 27, was seventh last year.

Chiappucci finished second in the Tour of Italy, Bugno fourth. The winner, Franco Chioccioli, also of Italy, is not entered in the Tour de France.

Breukink, the Netherlands’ best cyclist, rides for the always-strong PDM team. Raul Alcala of Mexico, also one of the Tour favorites, is riding for PDM this year, as are Sean Kelly of Ireland and Uwe Raab of Germany.

“I don’t foresee this causing any problems,” PDM trainer Jan Gisbers said of Breukink and Alcala being on the same team. “Those lads get on with each other splendidly, and I know for sure that we can easily share out the roles between them. With a little luck, one of the two could have won the Tour (de France) in 1990.”

Delgado, of Segovia, Spain, has been the Tour’s second-most dominant rider, behind LeMond, in the past five years. He finished second in 1987, first in ‘88, third in ’89 and fourth last year.

Delgado, 31, is always dangerous in the mountains and therefore is not expected to make a move until midway through the event at Pau, France. But this year’s course has only two mountaintop finishes.

The first 11 stages, through central and northern France, are considered easy, before a rest day transfers them to the base of the Pyrenees. From Pau, on the 12th stage, the Tour makes its first heavy climb to Jaca, Spain. The next stage has five hard climbs to Val Louron, France.

After Val Louron, the course traverses a relatively rolling region of southern France until the riders encounter the Alps.

As in past Tours, the dramatic climb to l’Alpe d’Huez on the 17th stage, July 23, could be crucial.

If the outcome still is in doubt after l’Alpe d’Huez, the time trial from Lugny to Macon, near Lyon, will probably determine the winner, as a time trial on the next-to-last day did last year. LeMond finished fifth in that trial, but overcame Chiappucci and entered Paris victorious the next day.

“This is an ideal route for me,” LeMond said. “Especially the first 10 flat stages. That gives me a chance to find my rhythm for the mountains.”

At that point, LeMond hopes the carbon fiber bicycle will give him an edge.

If it does, he can frame his fourth victory.

Tour de France July 6 -- Prologue at Lyon, 3.29 miles.

July 7 -- 1st stage -- Lyon to Lyon, 74.4 miles.

July 7 -- 2nd stage -- Bryon to Chassieu (team time trial), 26.66 miles.

July 8 -- 3rd stage -- Villeurbanne to Dijon, 129.58 miles.

July 9 -- 4th stage -- Dijon to Reims, 179.18 miles

July 10 -- 5th stage -- Reims to Valenciennes, 89.90 miles.

July 11 -- 6th stage -- Arra to Le Havre, 155.62 miles.

July 12 -- 7th stage -- Le Havre to Argentan, 102.30 miles.

July 13 -- 8th stage -- Argentan to Alencon (Individual time trial), 44.64 miles.

July 14 -- 9th stage -- Alencon to Rennes, 101.68 miles.

July 15 -- 10th stage -- Rennes to Quimper, 123.38 miles.

July 16 -- 11th stage -- Quimper to Saint to Herblain, 153.14 miles.

July 17 -- Transfer by plane Nantes to Pau.

July 18 -- 12th stage -- Pau to Jaca, Spain, 137.02 miles.

July 19 -- 13th stage -- Jaca to Val Louron, 143.53 miles.

July 20 -- 14th stage -- Saint to Gaudens to Castres, 106.02 miles.

July 21 -- 15th stage -- Albi to Ales, 144.77 miles.

July 22 -- 16th stage -- Ales to Gap, 130.82 miles.

July 23 -- 17th stage -- Gap to L’Alpe d’Huez, 79.36 miles.

July 24 -- 18th stage -- Bourg d’Oisans to Morzine, 154.38 miles.

July 25 -- 19th stage -- Morzine to Aix les Bains, 118.11 miles.

July 26 -- 20th stage -- Aix les Bains to Macon, 99.82 miles.

July 27 -- 21st stage -- Lugny to Macon (Individual time trial), 35.34 miles.

July 28 -- 22nd stage -- Melun to Paris (Champs to Elysees), 111.6 miles.